Defense in millionaire killing: 'She's a thief, not a killer'

SANTA ANA – "She's not a nice person," a defense attorney told an Orange County jury Thursday about his client, a Ladera Ranch woman on trial here, charged with orchestrating the murder of her millionaire boyfriend in 1994 for financial gain.

"Hate her as much as you want for being a cheater, a liar and a thief," Deputy Public Defender Mick Hill said. "But you can't vote her guilty of murder."

Hill insisted that circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution during a two-week trial does not prove that Nanette Johnston conspired with her ex-NFL football-playing lover to murder William McLaughlin on Dec. 15, 1994.

Johnston, 46, faces a potential life term in prison without the possibility of parole if she is convicted of special-circumstances murder of McLaughlin, the much-older boyfriend she was living with when he was gunned down in the kitchen of his Balboa Coves home by an intruder who gained entry into his home by using one key to get inside his gated community and another freshly made key to open the front door.

Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy argued Wednesday that Johnston manipulated her secret lover, Eric Naposki, who played parts of two seasons in the NFL, to murder McLaughlin so he would not discover that Johnston had been stealing from him and so she could claim a huge financial reward from his $1 million life insurance policy and as a beneficiary of his will.

Naposki, 45, was convicted of special-circumstances murder at his trial last year. He faces a sentence of life in prison without later this year.

The informal friendliness between the prosecuting and defense attorneys turned sour Thursday as the closing arguments were delivered.

Hill called the prosecutor by his first name throughout his final arguments and said Murphy presented "two hours of horse manure" in his final arguments. Murphy took offense over being called by his first name and told the jury that Hill, who was born and raised in Ireland, gave them "two hours of crap in an Irish accent."

They agreed on one thing in their final arguments: Naposki was the shooter who pumped six rounds from a 9 mm Beretta into McLaughlin's chest.

But while Murphy contended that there was "overwhelming evidence" linking Johnston to the plot to kill McLaughlin, Hill insisted there is no evidence that she participated in a conspiracy, no confession and no evidence that she was unhappy with McLaughlin.

"She's a thief," Hill added. "Not a killer."

Both attorneys said the keys used by the killer to gain access to the McLaughlin home were pivotal to their cases.

Murphy contended that Johnston gave Naposki her pedestrian-access key so that he could open a gate to get to the bay-front home, and also gave him her house key for him to copy to that he could open the front door to kill McLaughlin, who had just returned home from a trip to Las Vegas on his private plane.

But Hill insisted that the pedestrian key would have said "DO NOT DUPLICATE" if it belonged to Johnston, while the key dropped by the killer on the front door step did not have such a stamp.

"It means for sure it's not Nanette's key," Hill said, and he accused the prosecutor of misleading the jury by arguing that that gate access key left behind by the killer was stamped "DO NOT DUPLICATE."

Murphy, in his rebuttal argument, leaped to his feet, red in the face, and told the jury that he never suggested that the key was stamped "DO NOT DUPLICATE" and that he was aware from the beginning of his involvement in the case that there was no such stamp. He accused Hill of "inventing a Perry Mason moment."

The prosecutor added that when investigators examined Johnston's keychain the night of the murders, she was supposed to have four keys, and one of them was missing – the pedestrian-access key.